Ilona
Ilona is the wife of the Vampire Elder Viktor and the mother of Sonja. She was a formidable and high-ranking Death Dealer, one of the few female warriors at the time. She died while giving birth to Sonja over two centuries before Sonja’s execution. She’s mentioned only in passing in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. She is given an official name in the film's novelization. Ilona also plays a role in the non-canon novel, Blood Enemy. ''Underworld: Rise of the Lycans'' Almost two centuries before the main events of Rise of the Lycans, Ilona died giving birth to Sonja. Before that, she had been a formidable, high-ranking Death Dealer, one of few female warriors in the Vampire clan. Ilona's daughter, Sonja, cherished the memory of her mother and became a Death Dealer as a means of keeping in touch with her mother's memory, having never gotten a chance to know her. Following her death, a number of Ilona's possessions were passed on to Sonja from childhood,"Sonja glanced around the opulent bedchamber, perhaps for the very last time. The familiar furnishings tugged at her heart, which felt torn in two directions. Treasured heirlooms, many of them inherited from her mother, ornamented the shelves and dressers." ~ Underworld: Rise of the Lycans novelization, chapter 11 including a crest-shaped pendent, which would later play an important role in events occurring nearly 800 years after Ilona's death. When Sonja rebels against her father, Viktor even states that he regrets the day Ilona "died to give you Sonja life". After the death of Sonja due to her affair with and resulting pregnancy by a Lycan slave named Lucian, Viktor thinks to himself that he is grateful Ilona never lived to see her daughter's scandalous fall from grace. ''Blood Enemy'' Ilona's first introduction into the series is in Blood Enemy, a non-canonical telling of events published before the release of Rise of the Lycans. As with official canon, Ilona is the wife of Viktor and mother of Sonja. She is depicted as fulfilling the role of her husband's regent, being left in charge of his affairs while he is in hibernation during Amelia and Marcus Corvinus' reigns. She is a high-ranking Death Dealer, often leading raids to capture wild Lycans in their territory. While she does not demonstrate her husband's cold disregard for Lycans, she nevertheless has a low opinion of them, constantly dismissing them as brutish savages. Despite this, she compliments her Lycan servants and recognizes their skills, presenting Lucian with an ornate dagger for his role in fending off a daylight attack on the keep and proclaiming that all Lycans will be granted a holiday from their usual duties after that victory. Ilona is killed in 1201 AD during a raid by angry mortals on a keep where she and her party were scheduled to rest for the daylight hours while traveling to Ördögház to attend her husband's Awakening. Ilona is decapitated in front of her daughter. Her death is almost immediately avenged by Sonja, who sends the man responsible for her mother's death hurtling into a wall, cracking his head open, with Lucian taking Sonja to safety before the sun can affect her. Viktor is enraged by the death of his wife and executes the monk responsible for orchestrating the raid. Trivia * Ilona's name is a Hungarian variant of Helen/Helena, meaning "Light". * Ilona shares her name with Ilona Szilágyi, the second wife of Vlad the Impaler, and the daughter of Michael Szilágyi, a Hungarian nobleman, and cousin to Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary. * According to Underworld: Evolution, the keys for William Corvinus' prison were crafted by Selene's father, sometime in the late 14th century. Rise of the Lycans shows that Sonja had the pendant piece as a child, almost two hundred years before Selene's father was even born, it had apparently belonged to the late Ilona. It is likely this is a goof, given that no attempt is ever made to explain the timeline discrepancy. * In Blood Enemy, Ilona rides a black warhorse named "Lucifer". References es:Ilona fr:Ilona Category:Characters Category:Rise of the Lycans characters Category:Blood Enemy characters Category:Female characters Category:Vampires Category:Death Dealers Category:Deceased